20 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to attribute a much more remote antiquity to the most of them, and 

 that evidences of a neolithic age in the valley of the Nile are more 

 abundant than has generally been supposed. 



In many minds the historical antiquity of Egypt, the almost 

 fabulous ages to which its civilization ascends, seem to challenge the 

 history of other countries, and the land of the Pharaohs, rejecting all 

 chronological comparison, to have appeared in the midst of the world 

 as a single example of a land which savage life had never trodden. 

 Yet what are the centuries since Menes ruled over the reclaimed val- 

 leys, the few thousand years of which we can calculate the duration, 

 by the side of the incalculable lapse of time since man, struggling 

 with the glaciers and the prehistoric beasts, began his conquest of the 

 earth? The antiquity of Egypt, the eight thousand years (if it be as 

 many) since the first Pharaoh, are only as an atom in the presence 

 of these ages. "We can assert some vague knowledge of these pre- 

 Pharaonic inhabitants, for two hatchets of the Chellean pattern were 

 found some time ago in the desert, one at Esnet, the other near the 

 pyramids of Gizeh; and we can now affirm in the most positive man- 

 ner that Quaternary man lived in the country which is now Egypt, and 

 was then only preparing to be. Four palaeolithic stations have been 

 more recently discovered — at Thebes, Tukh, Abydos, and Daschur. 

 Join these sites to the other two where isolated pieces were found, and 

 we have the geography of what we know at present of Chellean man 

 in the valley of the Nile. Doubtless continuous researches would 

 result in similar discoveries at other points, for I have met these 

 relics wherever I have been able to make a short sojourn. The 

 Chellean implements are found in the gravels of the diluvium on 

 the pebbly surface. They have been disturbed and probably scat- 

 tered, but some places yield them more numerously than others — 

 points possibly corresponding to the ancient workshops. I have 

 found a considerable number of specimens at Deir-el-Medinet; M. 

 Daressy, of the Bureau of Antiquities, found a perfectly characteristic 

 Chellean hammer stone in the Valley of the Queens at Gurneh, as 

 perfectly worked as the best specimens found at Chelles, St. Acheul, 

 and Moulin-Quignon. 



The finds are not very numerous at Tukh, but one may in a 

 few hours make a collection there of hatchets (or hammer stones), 

 scrapers, points, simple blades, and a large number of stones bear- 

 ing indisputable marks of having been worked, but not presenting 

 precise forms. The deposit at Abydos is in the bottom of a circle 

 behind the ruins surrounding the Pharaonic necropolis. The speci- 

 mens seem sufficient to prove the existence of Quaternary man in 

 Egypt, while the search for them has hardly yet begun. In view of 

 them it is extremely improbable that man did not also exist there 



